
24-05-2008
@jelle: Yes, the source is reliable, as he is a member of the Cologne Zoo staff (and we're not talking about the souvenir shop owner or restaurant employee here...). According to him, the current curator wants something "the other (zoo)s don't have" (so probably no Baird Tapir, like in closeby Wuppertal...) for the planned new South American part of the zoo. And it seems that the curator was given the green light by both the Cologne Zoo administration and American zoos keeping Mountain tapirs to acquire a pair. However, we all know that zoo plans easily change; whether the tapirs in question will turn up as Baird's in the end, or whether they will keep their current tapirs, is another thing, but unlike Leipzig's zebra duiker for Gondwana Hall, the possibility that Mountain tapirs could come to Cologne Zoo is genuine. And about the TAG plans: that hasn't stopped zoos in the past to go through with their own ideas... 
About the in-situ & ex-situ linking of Cologne Zoo in terms of the Douc's-that has already been mentioned.
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